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Kristian Blummenfelt Appears to Have Recorded the Highest VO2 Max Ever > Kristian Blummenfelt of Norway, Olympic gold medallist triathlete and Ironman world champion, has now also become the first human to break the mythical 100 barrier in VO2 Max testing, registering an official measurement of 101.1 ml/kg/min!!!! > This means at the apex of it's aerobic capacity, Kristian's body effectively utilises 101.1 millilitres of oxygen, per kilogram of bodyweight, per minute of activity! For my predominantly strength orientated brethren who may not fully appreciate how batshit CRAZY this is, trust me when I tell you this is otherworldly stuff! > For perspective, the average professional footballer's (soccer) VO2 MAX score is usually around 55ml/kg/min. So this guy basically has TWICE the engine of the average pro footballer!! > The highest my VO2 Max was ever officially measured was 62ml/kg/min back when I was a competitive boxer in my early 20's, but I hadn't been training in months when I took the test. I later did a sub-maximal test which estimated my max at 67ml/kg/min, and at that point I honestly felt so fit that I was bouncing out of my skin. > At 101.1 I can't even conceive in mind how fit this guy feels! > In lay terms what this basically means is it's virtually impossible for this guy to get completely exhausted! Stay Strong (and fit). Context by Paul McIlroy.
Murray Gell-Mann talks about Richard Feynman If you've ever read any of Feynman's (not-technical, mostly autobiographical) books, you won't be too surprised about some of the claims made by Murray Gell-Mann here. It's refreshing to hear someone talk about Feynman, other than Feynman talk about himself, yet as claimed by YT's first comment: > Ironically this interview turns out to be yet another great anecdote about Feynman. This is the first video I've ever seen on YT where the comment section is HN-discussion level-worthy (incidentally, it's a [HN thread section on alleged physical abuse by Feynman](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7092275&utm_source=chatgpt.com) that brought me to this YT video)... Still, I'll keep recommending Feynman's books, he's just a delightful storyteller (and you can get to know quite a lot about the Manhattan project reading him).
Schrödinger’s Pedophilia: The Cat Is Out Of The Bag (Box) (2022) https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccacoffey/2022/01/24/schrdinger-pedophilia-the-cat-is-out-of-the-bag-box/ One example from the article (few more inside) > Ithi Junger. British astrophysicist John Gribbin reported in his 2013 biography Erwin Schrödinger and the Quantum Revolution that, at the age of 39, Schrödinger became enamored of 14-year-old Ithi, whom he was tutoring in math. “As well as the maths, the lessons included ‘a fair amount of petting and cuddling’ [as Schrödinger stated in his diary] and Schrödinger soon convinced himself that he was in love with Ithi.” There is no evidence that things went beyond “petting and cuddling” when Ithi was 14, but before he died in 1961 Schrödinger admitted that he’d impregnated her when she was 17. Her abortion left her sterile. And the author's conclusion: > Meanwhile, I’m still dealing with my shock about Erwin Schrödinger. For me right now, he exists in two states of being at once. In other words, Erwin Schrödinger has become Schrödinger’s Cat. He is both a beacon of scientific light and a monster. Both/and, not yet either/or. That being said, some behavior is just too putrid to tolerate. As the revelations about his behavior continue to curdle inside of me, one of those views will take precedence. Very soon, I suspect, I will say, “He’s dead to me.” I do not agree with this conclusion. For me, he can both be a scientific light and a monster. In the same way, I can still very much enjoy the artistic genius of Kevin Spacey, despite him getting cancelled a few years back for raping a boy. What do you think? Is a genius dead to you on all fronts once they did something awful? (I may have shared a similar article here in the past, but I couldn't find it.)
Travel Retail Norway introduces BTC payments for Click & Collect upon arrival > The payment solution is provided by Satoshi Consult, which TRN states has developed ‘a secure and user-friendly system tailored to Norwegian regulations’. > Customers can simple place their order via Click & Collect at www.tax-free.no. Upon pickup at Oslo Airport, the customer needs to selects bitcoin as the payment method. > Next, a QR code is generated, and the customer confirms payment via their own bitcoin wallet that supports the Lightning Network. The amount is displayed in NOK (Norwegian Kroner) and settled in real time. A receipt is issued as usual. > This option currently applies only to Click & Collect upon arrival at Oslo, though TRN says it’s considering expanding to other stores and payment formats.
prediction markets aren't just gambling I kinda get his point, most of the participants on prediction markets are in essence just gambling, yet, I do believe that it _in theory_, it can be more than that. I think I've only once joined one of the sports markets on Predyx, as I do believe I'm truly just betting there. But when I put some money on the impeachment of the former Korean president or the prosecution of his wife, I felt like I was doing so by adding knowledge to the market. So, the ones that put money on the sports markets, do you feel like you are gambling? Or financializing some of your knowledge? If it is gambling, do you agree with CZ that prediction markets are just gambling? If it is financializing, do you think it is fair to equate it with insider trading, akin to Pelosi making money playing the stock market as a politician based on knowledge not available to the general public?
Hash-based Signature Schemes for Bitcoin (Blockstream research) https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/2203.pdf > Abstract > Hash-based signature schemes offer a promising post-quantum alternative for Bitcoin, as their security relies solely on hash function assumptions similar to those already underpinning Bitcoin’s design. We provide a comprehensive overview of these schemes, from basic primitives to SPHINCS+ and its variants, and investigate parameter selection tailored to Bitcoin’s specific requirements. By applying recent optimizations such as SPHINCS+C, TL-WOTS-TW, and PORS+FP, and by reducing the allowed number of signatures per public key, we achieve significant size improvements over the standardized SPHINCS+ (SLHDSA). We provide public scripts for reproducibility and discuss limitations regarding key derivation, multi-signatures, and threshold signatures. Also: @Kudinov or @Nick on SN for an ELI5?
Draft BIP: Non-monetary UTXO cleanup (“The Cat”) and related materials. > It documents a soft-fork consensus change and new spending rules intended to remove an existing, snapshot-based set of non-monetary UTXOs (NMUs) created by protocols such as Ordinals and Stamps, by making those UTXOs permanently unspendable and eligible for removal from the UTXO set. So, basically, confiscating UTXOs I disagree with? Are we still talking about Bitcoin? Maybe this is not even worth sharing or discussing...
"we are not enron" says nvidia I've kinda cut out the AI news in terms of company valuation, stock market, etc, as I've made up my mind it's all VC bullshit. So, stumbling on this Coffeezilla piece brought me a bit up to date on what seems to be going on at the moment, at a more nuanced level. Maybe CZ is all wrong (he has been before, and this is for sure not his field of expertise), but I usually give him the benefit of the doubt when it's about spotting scams and grifts. So, do you think Nvidia is like Enron? Or more like Cisco?
Bailey, Lubka, Klipsten, Held, Saylor, etc - good or bad for Bitcoin? What's your take on the David Baileys, Steven Lubkas, Cory Klipstens, Dan Helds, Saylors, etc, of the online Bitcoin scene? To me, they seem like people who just care about playing the Wall Street game on top of Bitcoin. I probably shouldn’t call them grifters/scammers; that’s too harsh when you compare them with some of the actual ones (if you know, you know), because they aren’t committing any crime (that we know of). To me, they just have too much of a fiat mindset that is incompatible with what I think Bitcoin is trying to achieve. Or maybe they are just mirrors of what we'd all become in case we were running the companies they are? My first instinct is to judge them harshly, so I'd be happy to have someone giving me some counterweight to my knee-jerk reaction, to help me judge them more generously. Feel free to comment if you think they don't belong on the same list. Reading myself, this sounds like a Bitcoin maxi purity test. Well, I wrote it, so I should just post it now.
S. Korea logs world's longest commute, which studies say may fuel loneliness > Lee Han-soo, 34, spends nearly 2 1/2 hours a day traveling between his home near Namhansanseong Station on Subway Line No. 8 and his job at an IT firm near Hongik University Station on Subway Line No. 2 in Seoul. > “Although I’m used to it now, I’m completely drained by the time I get home,” he said. “I just grab something to eat and go straight to bed.” > For many South Koreans, Lee’s routine is far from unusual — it may even be typical. > A recent study published in Environmental Research Letters found that South Korea recorded the longest average daily travel time among 43 countries surveyed, at 1 hour and 48 minutes. > The global average was 1 hour and 8 minutes, meaning South Koreans, on average, spend an additional 40 minutes of their daily life commuting. A few years back, I commuted about 1 hour in the morning and 1h30 minutes in the evening, so a total of about 2h30 minutes. +/- 30 minutes, depending on traffic. This was with my 2-year-old son at the time. I got used to it, and my son didn't know any better, so he didn't complain. But now that I've moved near my workplace, commuting 2 minutes every day, I can't imagine ever going back to that old regime. And my now 6-year-old would probably also not agree so easily anymore. So, how long do you commute to work?
Bailey, Lubka, Klipsten, Held, Saylor, etc - good or bad for Bitcoin? What's your take on the David Baileys, Steven Lubkas, Cory Klipstens, Dan Helds, Saylors, etc, of the online Bitcoin scene? To me, they seem like people who just care about playing the Wall Street game on top of Bitcoin. I probably shouldn’t call them grifters/scammers; that’s too harsh when you compare them with some of the actual ones (if you know, you know), because they aren’t committing any crime (that we know of). To me, they just have too much of a fiat mindset that is incompatible with what I think Bitcoin is trying to achieve. Or maybe they are just mirrors of what we'd all become in case we were running the companies they are? My first instinct is to judge them harshly, so I'd be happy to have someone giving me some counterweight to my knee-jerk reaction, to help me judge them more generously. Feel free to comment if you think they don't belong on the same list. Reading myself, this sounds like a Bitcoin maxi purity test. Well, I wrote it, so I should just post it now.
'Kant took Suneung, too': Test-takers tormented by 18th-century philosopher > Kant reappeared in Question 34 of the English section, identified by EBS as one of the section’s most difficult items. > The passage explained Kant’s view that the rule of law provides the essential foundation for security, peace and genuine freedom, enabling societies to progress toward more rational and legally regulated forms of coexistence. Rather than relying on human goodness, Kant believed that universal law is necessary precisely because humans are prone to conflict. A binding legal framework, he argues, even for “a nation of devils,” can ensure harmony. > Ideally, such laws express principles that all rational beings would choose and therefore embody freedom rather than restrict it. > The question was a fill-in-the-blank requiring students not only to understand the passage’s main point but to choose an answer that was opposite of the correct conceptual fit. The blank appeared in the sentence: “If such laws forbid them to do something that they would not rationally choose to do anyway, then the law cannot be _________.” > Because the phrase “cannot be” inverted the logic, students had to select the option that did not align with Kant’s main argument, adding to the difficulty. Suneung, the most terrifying experience of a Korean high-schooler. It'll decide your future, or so people believe. Yesterday, during the English section of the Suneung, not even airplanes were allowed to land, to make sure no noise would perturb a test-taker.
Palantir: the world's most evil company > As an example of the evil nature of Palantir’s work, it appears that Palantir has been working with the Israeli military in so-called ‘targeted killings’. Reports have suggested such that these murders, probably in the thousands or tens of thousands, utilised social media information and cellphone tracking. According to a range of sources, over 150 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza and in numerous cases they appear to have been directly targeted. Using social media information to murder journalists using drone strikes is already dystopic, but this is likely to just be the beginning of the evil Palantir will facilitate. What's your take on Palantir? Someone in a group chat just wrote: > Palantir is Evil. > And Peter Thiel doing a 4 part series on the anti-christ is like Hitler giving a 4 part series on how someone might theoretically exterminate the elite cabal that is destroying the world and > Palantir is creating 'Master Databases' on all civilians for governments around the world should they turn enemies. But Palantir controls the data making them theoretically more powerful than the governments who pay them Billions. > And CEO Alex Karp has publicly expressed support for such roles, stating the company helps "scare enemies and on occasion kill them" I haven't really looked into his story other than what i posted here, but seems like it's yet another techbro with a lot of money who is getting a little bit _too_ powerful.
The Gambling Epidemic Coffeezilla's answer to this problem is more regulation. What's yours? Or there is no answer? Or you don't perceive this as a problem? As for me, I think it _is_ a problem. I don't think there is a clear answer. People with education may be better able to respond to the increasingly adversarial conditions. So teaching my son about these kinds of dangers will be part of my responsibility. Regulation is probably one way to mitigate some of the damage, but eventually, it won't matter in the big scheme of things. Gambling has become too pervasive, too hard to control. This is what the market wants, so this is what people get. On a side note, it's fun at some point in the video that he contrasts the stock market with the rest, as it is somehow still being built on fundamentals. The stock market has always been the rich man's casino; now, at least, it's accessible to all, and there is no illusion anymore that it is somehow anything more than a casino. Yet, some people, including Coffeezilla and the Buttcoiners, still delude themselves into thinking it's anything other than a casino. Off I go, gotta go check my Predyx bets~~
Soft Fork Compromise on op_return to Resolve Current Bitcoin Controversies https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/9UfCVFZAUPU/m/VypTi8fmAgAJ The OP of this mailing list post reads very much like #AIslop, but I commend the few people who've answered to give clear and reasoned answers. I link here to the final answer, which, yet again, explains the reasoning behind the recent core v30 changes. My guess is that many of the proponents of knots have not actually followed the discussions from the last few years that led to this decision. So, maybe, this provides some insights...